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Here at Food52, we love recipes -- but do we always use them? Of course not. Because once you realize you don't always need a recipe, you'll make your favorite dishes a lot more often.

Today: Food52's Assistant Editor Marian Bull proves that the perfect grilled cheese is within reach -- and you don't need a recipe to make one.

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A perfectly executed grilled cheese sandwich relies on a number of factors, the most important being: Textural contrast, cheese that melts, and avoiding burnt toast at all costs. Also, a lot of butter.

Here is the biggest problem with grilled cheese making: Sometimes your cheese does not melt as quickly as you'd like, so you either get hard, cold cheese surrounded by perfectly golden bread, or melted cheese hiding behind charred, black bread that you then have to scrape into the sink. There is no kitchen sound more shameful than this.

But lucky you! I have a no-fail way to make grilled cheese sandwiches at home, and it yields both melty cheese and a buttery, golden exterior. It also allows you to serve multiple hot sandwiches at a time, which means if you want to have, say, a grilled cheese party, you don't have to draw straws to decide who gets to eat the only warm one.

How to Make a Perfect Grilled Cheese Sandwich in 5 Steps

1. Before you get started, set yourself up for success: Slice your bread, shred whatever cheese you'll be using, and bring your butter to room temperature. Preheat your oven to 350° F and preheat a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat.

Generously butter two thick slices of bread. I like crusty, chewy bread (like a sourdough or levain) without too many big holes, but if you grew up on Wonderbread and Kraft singles, well, I'm not going to stand in your way. You want an even smear of butter that covers the whole slice -- this makes for a crisp, golden, flavorful exterior. If your butter is unsalted, sprinkle a bit of salt over each buttered side.

2. Lay one piece of bread, butter-side down, in your hot pan. The butter should sizzle, but not angrily -- you don't want your pan so hot that it burns your bread in under two minutes. Top the bread with shredded cheese; I use a mix of Gruyère and cheddar. Use whatever cheeses you like, but remember that melty cheeses should dominate, and something sharp like cheddar will balance out all of the fat and general unctuousness happening here.

You can also customize your filling here: try dashandbella's pickled jalapeños or sautéed mushrooms. Some people swear by a smear of mustard; I have never tried this, and maybe never will. I'm lazy.

3. Lay down your second piece of bread, buttered side up, and press down with a spatula. You don't want to flatten the sandwich completely, but a good press will help your cheese melt, your butter sear, and your bread smoosh in a pleasant way.

4. After a minute or so, begin to check the color on your bottom slice. Once it's nice and brown, flip everything over, holding the sandwich together with your other hand to keep it from falling apart. Press down some more with your spatula, and cook until the bottom slice looks like the top slice.

5. Here's the kicker! Once you're happy with the color of your crust, finish your sandwich on a baking sheet in the oven. If you're making more than one, use the oven as a way to keep everything warm. Let your sandwiches bake for at least five minutes, or until their cheese is completely melted.

Slice in half, and enjoy immediately. Remember that tomato soup is never a bad idea. And you'll want some napkins at the ready.

Photos by James Ransom

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I personally like my grilled cheese well pressed, I use a cast iron griddle and put a heavy skillet (with a piece of foil between) on top. Bread with large holes that go through can usually be patched with small pieces of crust. I can't say that I've ever seen any difficulty getting them to come out right, seems like one of the simplest dishes out there to me.

Wow, I'm hearing a little bit of hostility from some ...it's OK people! This is a great site to share the joys and secrets of cooking great meals, not a bash forum. We all do our best, no one's perfect, and we each of us have different tastes and preferences. If the bread's too burned for you, just don't eat it. Cook it your own way. Or not at all. With or without nutmeg, although I'm gonna try that next time, and the mayo too! And with some must-have freshly sliced organic tomato to slip in there after grilling. Yum

Zeldie, what you believe is your business only. You may be in the minority in the kitchen though as far as cast iron and carbon steel pans go. Cast iron is not only non-stick naturally when properly seasoned and cared for, but is beneficial to your health as it adds iron into your diet. Well cared for cast iron IS clean, but not scrubbed. Carbon steel on the other hand gets better with age also when cared for properly, and that is not scrubbing it within an inch of it's life. The grease and oils cooked onto carbon steel baking pans over the years puts a nice patina on the pans that is also somewhat non-stick and much better for you than the so called coated non-stick pans that people buy. I am sorry you are anal about scrubbed pots & pans, you miss a lot in life that way dear. Also, do not judge other people by the look of their cookware. I have been using cast iron pots, pans and baking pans and carbon steel baking sheets and pans for over 50 yrs and my carbon steel pans are now black with a very nice patina. I finally got my husband who does the dishes in our house to treat my cast iron pans with reverence by giving him fried eggs with the yolks broken. He asked why and I told him it was because he had scrubbed my egg pan and not reseasoned it. He now knows how to clean all the pans and he even rubs them down with a kitchen towel that has a bit of lard on it and sets them in a warm oven when he does the dishes. Have a wonderful weekend.

Grilled cheese looks great but do not like the very used skillets and cookie sheets shown in these photos. Yes, I know a cast iron skillet is better with wear and tear but I believe in scrubbed and cleaned pots, pans, skillets, cookie sheets and everything else in my kitchen. At least a piece of parchment paper on the cookie sheet.

LOL. You've never set foot in a restaurant kitchen, apparently. The pots and pans, especially, are usually covered with a thick layer of carbon (which is basically all that's on those cookie sheets). When it gets thick enough to be bothersome (like keeping you from getting a good sear) whomever is low man on the totem pole in the kitchen has to scrape the carbon off, but it doesn't hurt a thing to leave it there until it gets thick enough. It's not dirty, it's basically inert.

Pastry chefs will usually use parchment or Silpats or something else, but that's to keep things from sticking and to keep their shape, not because it would hurt to cook them on a little carbon.

I have ten grandchildren and I am famous for my grilled cheese sandwiches. I've been making it exactly as you did but the only thing I add to mine is very thinly sliced red onion. People who don't like onions, love it in the sandwich, it really does something amazing to the flavor. Sourdough is the best, and when the cheese is grated, it melts more evenly.

Hi Penny,I totally agree with you on the thin onion slice. I usually cook my grilled cheese with caramelized red shallot and garlic. Also, i found that a few apple dice in the caramelized onion goes very well with cheese, especially cheddar...my two cents ;)

Love the recipe, but am wondering why you grate the cheese. I use Kerry Gold's Dubliner cheese on my grilled cheese sammies with either a real sour sourdough bread or a dark rye bread I make myself in my bread machine. I don't grate the cheese, I slice it and put a couple of slices of cheese something a bit less and 1/4" thick, side by side on the bread. I would think that grating the cheese would make it almost impossible to turn the sandwich without burning yourself for having to hold on to it so tightly. The sliced cheese melts real good when you put the cast iron lid on the cast iron griddle after you turn the sandwich and turn the heat down just a smidge and let it toast and melt away. I make a nice tomato bisque soup to go with as my husband prefers creamed tomato soup and I like the bits of tomato in the cream. A sprinkling of Penzeys Florida seasoned pepper on the soup at serving, or even just their Extra Bold Peppercorns freshly cracked on top is the perfect touch to soup and sandwich(we dunk sandwich into soup at our house).

remember to preheat your pan,very important!! try substituting mayonnaise in place of butter on the outside of your sandwich, it really works. now do what my father did and sprinkle on some worcestershire sauce, and serve with red pepper tomato soup, and voila!!! mighty fine eating.

My husband begs for grilled cheese sandwiches made with buttered bread and cheddar, as you suggest, but here's the kicker......he adds currant jelly and Dijon mustard. Swears it is his favorite....for me, it's just cheese and tomato.

I've found that our waffle griddle, which can be flipped to flat griddle irons for sandwiches, makes a perfect grilled cheese. The surrounding heat ensures melted cheese, and the iron presses the grilled cheese panini-like.

But if I don't feel like pulling out the waffle iron (e.g., for one sandwich) I simply put the a lid on the cast iron skillet after I flip the sandwich. It basically combines the oven step with the grilling step.

I never use butter, I make my own ghee and use that to make my grilled cheese. It toasts without burning, and it's easy to use sparingly and still get a fully rich and satisfactory result. I find that the grilling process is much more forgiving, i.e., less likely to burn; I get the crispy, crunch outside and fully melted cheese. There's no flavor compromise, and much less danger that I'll have to deal with grease running down my hands.

I like grilling the bread on both sides; grill two slices of bread in salted butter, flip them over, and with the browned sides facing up, add the cheese to one slice and close the sandwich so that the cheese is sandwiched in between the browned surfaces. This gives the cheese a head start to melting as well as an extra buttery taste. Next, butter the outside (untoasted sides) of the sandwich, place back into the skillet and proceed with Marian’s step 3.

BTW: My Italian husband doesn't like butter, especially cooked or fried buyer. So I have started making grilled cheese without buttering the levain first and it always turns out fine. His favorite cheese mixture is sheep's ricotta and parmigiano. I also add some cheddar sometimes. Then there is also chopped fresh boiled spinach (well rung) mixed with a fork into the ricotta and parmigiano and a little grated nutmeg. He thinks is the crazy good. Try it.PS: Are you all really serious about the bit of burn on the toast?No one has to eat it.

For Judith and Sharron, I've just rechecked the grilled cheese photos, and the burned section (black, on the left part of the left half of the sandwich) is definitely on the grilled cheese sandwich, not French toast. I don't even see a photo of French toast on this page, just photos of the grilled cheese sandwich in several stages of preparation. All you have to do is look at the bottom photo and you'll see black on the left of the left half of the sandwich. No need to criticize me -- I didn't burn the bread.

Some people really like their bread, toast, etc. super dark (i.e., burned to the rest of us). I've found it interesting that the bakeries here charging the most for hearth baked breads often sell them with entire bottom crusts (and most of the rest of it) that are black or nearly black. To each his or her own, I suppose. ;o)

There is no conclusive evidence that burnt food causes illness. There are different reports and here is one from the International Food Information Council. http://www.foodsafetynews...Broader studies and education on the subject is needed.And, "We found that, if we took one individual study that finds a link with cancer, it was very often difficult to repeat that in other studies," said Schoenfeld. "People need to know whether a study linking a food to cancer risk is backed up before jumping to conclusions."From: http://www.theguardian...Personally we have been eatting it since the beginning of time so I am still not sure of the benefits or lack of. I hope to follow "everything in moderation" as my grandmother taught. She lived into her 90's, raised Angus beef and ate a lot of meat including BBQ'd. She also drank an Old Fashion in the evening and did not smoke.

The burnt foods causing cancer derives primarily from mouse studies. Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist who has advocated that cooking arose in concert with the evolution of the human species, argues that the strong appeal of burnt and charred food to us may suggest that we have evolved mechanisms for coping with the bad chemicals in "burnt" food, as there was a benefit in eating food that had fewer parasites. In other words, humans may have evolved a feature that renders mouse models useless for testing the harm of burnt food.

But I would argue that our dislike for things that are too burnt could suggest that there is still some drawback to eating too much of it. A little char on your dinner is not going to kill you.

I like to cover the sandwich with a small pan lid (smaller than the frying pan I'm using, and a bit larger than the sandwich) while I cook the first half. This helps the cheese to melt more quickly, making the sandwich easier to flip.

This is comfort for for me. I sometimes substitute onion salt or garlic salt, add a sprinkle of romano cheese inside. I have used a light coating of olive oil in place of the butter or margarine before browning in the skillet. When eating with a bowl of tomato soup, I will sometimes drizzle a little Franks Red Hot sauce onto the sandwich. (I only use my very well seasoned cast iron skillet for stove top cooking of this type.)

It's a rainy, windy and unseasonably warm afternoon in Western Kentucky. Which had me wanting to stay in for lunch. So I made a grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough bread with Provolone and Shredded Sharp Cheddar along with a hit of Dijon Mustard on one side. So yummy!

I can't believe I am just finding out how to make the perfect grilled cheese, but this method (stove+oven) really worked well! The bread was just crunchy enough on the outside, and the inner parts of the bread weren't hard. And the cheese melted just right! :)